exercise: N 2.7

The earth swells and falls in steep grades. The roots of young trees, coursing with vitality and strength, criss-cross the tangled paths, erupting from the soil like jagged rocks in an awful harbour. Sharp stones, too, fill the trails, made of edge and corner, points jutting up from concealing earth to snag errant ankles.
Trees rise up from the soil, reaching into the atmosphere, their vivid green canopies murmurring to one another, their heights unreachable. Dark branches caress and sway together in a lurid, cosmic dance. Birds, hidden within the boughs, chitter to one another, issuing threats, seductions. Now and then, a flash of darkness as a bird takes wing, casts its blurred shadow against the fecund backdrop. Insects, too, above, buzzing. Communicating in their incomprehensible dialect, too small to see at a glance, but crawling, covering every centimetre of the forest.
Some of the greenery is poisonous, to human and animal alike. Plain-looking plants, green stalks flashing in the sunlight, delicate white flowers atop; a Latinized scientific name, and a playful, everyday one; all belie the acids coursing through each fleshy cell of these plants, so unassuming in appearance. They’re scattered throughout this place, within the meadows, under the shade of trees, poking up among the smooth rocks of the marshy river bank. There is a cure for the poison, an antidote for the vicious symptoms, but it’s not to be found in the woods.
The white noise of a rushing river filters up through the vegetation from its valley below. There, the powerful water dominates the stones and dead trunks that have fallen into its path – it cuts the very earth over which it runs. Erodes, takes it away, particle by particle, exchanging today for tomorrow.
Shifting winds bring thick grey clouds into the sky where once there was clear blue. A chill descends and the green shadows lengthen to an inky grey-black. Roots and stones slither into darkness, concealed anew. Thunder cracks like a loosened load of rubble spilling onto the ground. The rain will come soon, the forest will be transformed.